entertainment section 1st graders_2017 Entertainment Section 2017 | Page 9

Stephen King’s enthralling “Under the
Dome” (2009) dreamed up a small Maine
town thrown into a surreal situation: The
place was suddenly covered by an
invisible, impermeable dome. It’s a
sprawling book with a big cast of
characters, but the drama of this crisis
brings every one of them into sharp
focus. It’s one of his best books, drawing
its terror from human nature, not from a
voyage into fearsome fantasyland.
Now he and his son Owen King have
attempted something similar in “Sleeping Beauties.” The small
town is Dooling, somewhere in Appalachia within reach of
Wheeling, W. Va.’s television and radio signals. The strange
situation is this: Women who fall asleep don’t wake up, and they
begin growing tendrils that are big trouble. The tendrils turn into
cocoons, and it’s tempting to brush those cocoons away. This is
ill-advised. The sleeping angel who looks so peaceful may gouge
out an eye if her floss is mussed.
Like “Under the Dome,” “Sleeping Beauties” is straightforwardly
written. There are no long, dreamy passages in italics here. That’s
the good news; the less happy news is that this co-authored book
is sleepy in its own right. It too has a lot of characters, but very
few of them spring to life, and many of them seem repetitive.
Without speculating on what the father-son writing process was
like, it feels as though some kind of politesse kept this 700-page
book from being usefully tightened.